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'plough their trade" for "ply their trade"

Surprisingly common – 44,000 plus raw Google hits, against almost 6 million for “plying their trade”:

” I imagine prostitutes ultimately being forced off local streets and into Tower Hamlets Cemetery where they are able to plough their trade”

“The Afghan Traders used the route as well to plough their trade between the remote settlements in the area.”

”... encouraging the country’s filmmakers and technicians to move away from the big screen and plough their trade in TV with offers of increased salaries”

Easy to see how it was eggcorned: “plough” as a verb is a lot commoner than “ply”, which is now effectively restricted to the “ply (pronoun) trade” expression, and “plough” seems to make sort-of-sense, since ploughing is to do with work.

Re: 'plough their trade" for "ply their trade"

If you are new to the forum, terry, welcome aboard. You have a base hit your first time at the plate. We could quibble a bit about the lack of sound parallelism, but it looks to me like a real eggcorn. It’s surprising how common this error is.

I’m getting quite a few more hits for “plough one’s/his/her/their/your trade” than for “plow one’s/his/her/their/your trade.” I wonder why. “Plow is supposedly the American spelling, “plough” the British (I’m Canadian, so I’m just confused about the correct spelling.). It may be that the idiom “ply one’s trade” is more common in the UK than in America, and therefore more available for eggcorning. Or it may be that error is lodged in a speech community and the community is mostly composed of UK people.

Re: 'plough their trade" for "ply their trade"

Nice find, Terry. Plough and ply are near-homophones for some Northern Irish speakers which might help account for your numbers, Kem. It strikes me that ships in constant travel are said to ply the oceans in the same way that tractors plough fields but on a rather larger scale of course – and they turn a watery furrow too. Works equally well in reverse:

Re: 'plough their trade" for "ply their trade"

I think some instances of Peter’s variant are definitely eggcorns, but the situation is interestingly complex. Peter’s second quotation is from George Chapman’s translation of Hesiod’s Works and Days, and Chapman is probably using one of the older senses of “ply”—“to attend to,” or something similar. The OED marks this sense as obsolete, with the last citation from the late 18th century. But if you put in “plying the fields” on books.google.com, you get a number of citations where people or machines are clearly harvesting rather than plowing. Perhaps those writers are just really confused, but maybe this sense of ply quietly lives on or has been brought back into use; in fact, it could conceivably be a modern extension of the sense of ply in “ply one’s trade”—sort of completing the semantic circle.

Re: 'plough their trade" for "ply their trade"

I think Pat’s probably right, but returning to my book after my last post almost instantly I came across the following:

‘When the great fenne or Moore, which watreth the walls of the citie on the north-side is frozen, many young men plye upon the yce; some, striding as wide as they may, do slide swiftly … Some tie bones to their feete, and under their heeles, and shoving themselves by a little picked staff, doe slide as swiftly as a bird flieth in the ayre, or an arrow out of a Crossbowe.’A Survey of London, John Stowe, 1598

Ordinarily I’d have assumed the above plye meant play, but now I’m not so sure – ice skaters too turn a furrow, albeit a small one.

Re: 'plough their trade" for "ply their trade"

Ply is wonderfully diverse in meaning. I don’t think it is common to be able to refer to “sense 9” for most words. And yet, it seems too obscure for some who have misheard or misremembered “ply their trade” in the following ways. Wily hookers can ploy their trade; sales people can lay it on thick while applying their trade; footballers who are married to their mates can plight their trade; and noble fisher-folk pride their trade.

Re: 'plough their trade" for "ply their trade"

Just spotted a case of this today and first thought was to come and check if it was here.
Oddly “plough” gets no hits when searching the main part of the eggcorns site, so it would appear to not be in the database. Glad I also searched the forum before making a new submission.

I wonder if this is somewhere between an eggcorn and a mixed metaphor / mixed idiom.
Is there some overlap between “plough his own furrow” and “ply his trade” in some people’s minds? Enough to cause the confusion?
I see significant difference in meaning or at least in implied meaning – I take the first to mean doing something your own way, possibly contrary to popular or common practice or opinion, rather than just to do a job / activity.

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Build a man a fire and he will be warm for a day; set a man on fire and he will be warm for the rest of his life – Terry Pratchetthttp://blog.meteorit.co.uk